John Paczkowski, on the RIM Playbook:
If Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook is to succeed at market the way the company hopes, there are a few engineering hurdles to overcome. The most significant, according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, is the device’s relatively poor battery life.
Sources tell him the tablet currently lasts just a few hours per charge, compared with rivals like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which lasts about six, and the iPad, which lasts upward of 10.
Last night, the family and I went to Best Buy.
Now, I usually avoid retail stores as much as possible. Even going to the grocery store is something I dislike. Sadly, I couldn’t escape it last night, but I did come away with some random thoughts.
The store had the Kindle, the Nook, the Nook Color and Sony’s reader all on display, as well as some models I didn’t recognize. Clearly, the Kindle is the machine to beat. At $139, it was the cheapest contender, and by far the best. The screen is simply wonderful.
So what happened to the year of the tablet? The answer is simple: the iPad. Apple offered a slatelike computer that incorporated its perfected iTunes app experience, at the right price point, and with an intuitive interface that helped the company quickly sell millions of its newfangled device.
As we move into 2011, the murmurs coming out of the next Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas all have to do with tablets again. There will be Microsoft tablets, Hewlett-Packard slates and a number of devices running the Google Android platform. All hope to take on Apple. And so we’re looking at another Year of the Tablet.
Well, the desk I have been building with my dad has graduated from the garage. While we are going to finish it — paint the base, stain the top — once it is warm outside in the spring, the glass and trim work is complete.
It makes my 24" iMac look tiny.
Be sure to check out my piece over at Macgasm, in which I discuss Intel, ARM, Android, Apple and the Newton. All at once.
Not sure what my earlier post was about? Don’t fear, everything you need to know about the holiday can be seen in this three minute video:
First off, here’s Steve Wozniak in an open letter to the FCC:
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away.
[…]
We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it’s probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.
Jürgen, on the Cultured Code blog:
The final release of cloud sync as part of Things is still off by a few months. But we plan to publish more details about what we are doing (and have been doing) every few weeks.
OTA sync has been a major drawback for Things since day one, but the problem got a lot worse since OmniFocus’ OTA sync has gained serious traction. Hopefully, Cultured Code can make this happen quickly.
This morning, the team behind Sparrow, a minimal Gmail client for the Mac, dropped the 7th beta of the software.
The low-profile labeling system is my favorite addition, by far. Selecting “Archive and Label” will move the message into that mailbox, so it shows up where you expect it to in Mail. Here’s a screenshot of what I meant by a “low-profile” design.
Wonder why I have [Gmail] in all my label names? Check out this guide I wrote concerning Gmail, IMAP and Mail.app.
My wife, who was an ESL teacher before being a mom, watched this video speechless.